Eye movements and parafoveal processing during reading in Korean

Abstract

Parafoveal word processing was examined during Korean reading. Twentyfour native speakers of Korean read sentences in two conditions while their eye movements were being monitored. The boundary paradigm (Rayner, 1975) was used to create a mismatch between characters displayed before and after an eye movement contingent display change. In the first condition, the critical previews were correct case markers in terms of syntactic category (e.g., object marker for an object noun) but with a phonologically incorrect form (e.g., using 를 instead of 을when the preceding noun ends with a consonant). In the second condition, incorrect case markers in terms of syntactic category were used, creating a semantic mismatch between preview and target. Results include a small but significant parafovea-on-fovea effect on the preceding fixation, combined with a large effect on late measures of target word reading when a syntactically incorrect preview was presented. These results indicate that skilled Korean readers are quite sensitive to high-level linguistic information available in the parafovea.

Cross-language parafoveal semantic processing: Evidence from Korean–Chinese bilinguals

“…Recently, Wang, Zhou, Shu, and Yan (2014) tested parafoveal processing for unbalanced Korean-Chinese bilinguals and found only low-level orthographic but not high-level semantic PB from Chinese preview words. In contrast, native Korean readers can obtain high-level (i.e., syntactic and semantic) information from parafoveally presented Korean words, as demonstrated by Kim et al (2012) and in the present study. Taken together, it is likely that effectiveness in parafoveal high-level information processing is jointly influenced by factors at different levels, including a visual level, such as text layout; a linguistic level, such as priority in information processing in a writing system; and, finally, an individual level, such as reading proficiency.…”

“…Results showed parafoveally presented inappropriate syntactic case markers led to a substantial prolongation in processing time of the target word and thus provided the first evidence for parafoveal processing of syntactic information using the Korean script. Results from Kim et al (2012) also suggest a possibility in preprocessing of other types of high-level linguistic information.…”

“…The only study on parafoveal processing during Korean reading was conducted by Kim, Radach, and Vorstius (2012): the previews had either correct or incorrect case markers in terms of syntactic category. Results showed parafoveally presented inappropriate syntactic case markers led to a substantial prolongation in processing time of the target word and thus provided the first evidence for parafoveal processing of syntactic information using the Korean script.…”

Russian Sentence Corpus: Benchmark measures of eye movements in reading in Russian

“…Recently, there has been a virtual explosion of comparative cross-linguistic research on reading in typologically diverse languages with non-Roman orthographies, such as Chinese (Bai, Yan, Liversedge, Zang, & Rayner, 2008;Yan, Richter, Shu, & Kliegl, 2009;Tsai, Kliegl, & Yan, 2012;G. Yan, Tian, Bai, & Rayner, 2006), Japanese (Sainio, Hyönä, Bingushi, & Bertram, 2007), Korean (Kim, Radach, & Vorstius, 2012), Hebrew (Pollatsek, Bolozky, Well, & Rayner, 1981), Thai (Winskel, Radach, & Luksaneeyanawin, 2009), Hindi (Husain et al, 2015), Arabic (Paterson, Almabruk, McGowan, White, & Jordan, 2015), Urdu (Paterson et al, 2014), and Uighur (M. Yan et al, 2014). Their visual, orthographic, lexical, and sentence-level characteristics required modification of existing models of reading and psycholinguistic theories.…”

Is semantic preview benefit due to relatedness or plausibility?

“…There is now increasing evidence that readers of English also benefit from previews of semantically related words but only under certain conditions (e.g., Schotter, 2013;Schotter, Lee, Reiderman, & Rayner, 2015; press; but see Rayner, Balota, & Pollatsek, 1986;Rayner, Schotter, & Drieghe, 2014). The relative elusiveness of semantic preview benefit in English contrasts with languages such as Chinese (Yan, Richter, Shu, & Kliegl, 2009; see also Tsai, Kliegl, & Yan, 2012;Yan, Zhou, Shu, & Kliegl, 2012), German (Hohenstein & Kliegl, 2014), and Korean (Kim, Radach, & Vorstius, 2012). Investigating the conditions required to observe the effect in English will therefore enhance our understanding of how parafoveal processing contributes to reading.…”